Levinas and OOO

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve been surprised to discover that there’s a profound overlap between OOO and the ethical thought of Levinas. At its core, OOO is, I believe, an ontology of radical alterity. Every object is an absolute alterity with respect to every other object. This, I believe, is the key meaning of Harman’s concept of withdrawal and vicarious causation. It is also the meaning of Morton’s concept of objects as strange strangers. The difference here would be that where Levinas’ thought indexes the withdrawal of the Other to other humans and the divine, OOO indexes this infinite excess to all objects. When I get back to Texas it looks like I’ll have to go back to Levinas and determine how well this thesis works (I suspect this will also involve a foray into Lingis as well). Graham already does a lot of this work in Guerrilla Metaphysics, however there his focus is primarily on the elemental.

When situated in terms of Levinas, I think we get a better sense of what OOO targets in both correlationism and perspectivism (perspectivism being a form of correlationism). Recalling the famous scene from Being John Malkovich, I have coined the term “Malkovichism” in The Democracy of Objects.

Malkovichism consists in the erasure of alterity, such the being of other objects is reduced to being a mere vehicle for perspective, meanings, human intentions, etc. The being of objects is reduced to what it is for-us. As I argued in my post last night, this move tends to be premised on a faux belief that somehow recognizing this perspectivism will lead us to be more tolerant of otherness. As Graham observes in his fine response to Vitale today:

The main problem the object-oriented approach faces is, I believe, a cultural one. People are so used to thinking of autonomous reality as being a tool of bad essentialism, oppressive patriarchy, bland traditional school philosophy, and boring rich heterosexual white people, and so used to thinking instead of process and relation as being the flower of liberation, creativity, experiment and diversity, that they instinctively react against any theory involving anything that has reality in its own right. But you have to fight those prejudices.

The paradox is that perspectivism, far from increasing diversity, creativity, and experimentation seems to produce precisely the reverse. Why? Because with the perspectivist ideology one has the answer to everything– “well that’s just a perspective!” –and therefore renders itself immune to any encounter with alterity. It is only where the alterior is treated as the alterior, where it is treated as having autonomous existence of its own, that the object can be seen as the ruin of all categorizations, identifications, significations, meanings, intentions, perspectives, etc., insofar as it exceeds any of these translations. It is with this recognition of the object as the alien, the strange stranger, the Other that respect for objects can begin, i.e., that we begin to get real diversity rather than a Malkovichism that reduces all otherness to what it is for a perspective. Moreover, creativity can only begin to occur where one opens himself to the otherness of the other, passing through alien mediums that force us to become other than what we are and that allow for aleatory adventures of signification, craft, and meaning where all relations between pre-established models and subordinated matters are called into question.

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19 Responses to “Levinas and OOO”

This opening of oneself to the “otherness of the other” and of “aleatory adventures” reminds me of the early and middle work of David Cronenberg such as Videodrome, The Fly or Crash in which some disease, event or accident transforms the individuals in strange ways, often offering the individuals a new mode of life or ethical commitment. These forms of alien intrusion are not simply horrific or destructive, but constructive, as the individuals caught up in the transformations have to confront radical alterity — both from “within” and “without.” Many of Cronenberg’s characters become strange and unknown objects unto themselves through these encounters and transformations. At times in his films it seems the case that something is coming to be through the alien medium of humanity or a human individual, in which the human person at times is a vehicle for the interest of the disease or aleatory event or accident.

I like this comment, Joseph. I’ve often thought that there is an ethics of horror in various ways. For instance, if you get cut, you really bleed, it’s not just a perception in your head. Your own body (“own” in quotation marks I guess) has this otherness, already. The moment in The Fly when Goldblum’s character takes off his own jaw is just extraordinary in that regard.

Levi–very interesting. In Otherwise than Being Levinas makes a case for the “element” (which you referenced) being a kind of gate into Otherness, which I see as a way to think non-humans (and non-life forms) as strangers in that sense. I shall post on this later I think.

I recently explained my own philosophical project to a friend and I find it striking that our inquries are in alignment. This project can be summarized in the following question: what is lived experience for the human being at the level of a complete equality of things that exceeds recognized notions of social (participatory) and legal equality and how is it accessed?

This question, as you touch on above (I think), brings me to the fork in the road where I must choose between a relation of commonality that draws out all an-sich (I’m making that up) or the withdrawal of an-sich that minimizes relations of commonality.

Now the solution should be to bring the commonality of withdrawal to the fore, and I think that you’ll agree with this as it gets to the heart of object-oriented ontology if not speculative realism generally, but the problem then becomes “how do we access this commonality, how is it lived?”

The virtue of Giorgio Agamben’s work is to say that this commonality of withdrawal (whatever-being), the community of an-sich (the coming community), lies right under our nose in the essence of language. Paradoxically, the example is the example of this: the example, like the word, suggests commonality in the very withdrawal that marks its enunciation.

Now, I side with speculative realism (I think) in objecting that language doesn’t sufficiently establish the complete and utter equality between all things, though I think my reasons, still under development, differ. But what then properly exposes the commonality of withdrawal, the community of an-sich, to lived experience and so makes it tangible, something we can begin to *do*?

Here I feel speculative realism, as far as I’ve read (and that ain’t much), isn’t enough either: what’s required is more than mere recognition of the withdrawal of an-sich, the autonomy of objects in your language; more than the right to credibly speak of this withdrawal, however tangible the effects of this exercise are in lived experience; more than respect for and humility in the face of objects.

My suspicion is that something much more visceral is called for. This is where Bataille comes in. Bataille, to my knowledge, is the person to attempt to *live* the commonality of withdrawal, a project I believe he inherits, and fulfills, from Nietzsche (who didn’t go all the way); and it’s an experience that puts him on the razor edge of speech, on the brink of experiencing experience itself, as suggested in his technical use of the term communication. Communication is the base desire to equivocate oneself with Being in a way that exceeds any positive proposition, and the problem for modern man is that, cut off from God, he has to find his way alone and in darkness.

This is also why I’m interested in the minority tradition of Via Negativa in Christianity. Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Avila, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, these strange Christians aren’t interested in merely proposing a relaitonship to God in word and deed, but experiencing that relationship (experience in the Bataillean sense). Isn’t this the cloud of unknowing as set forth in that treatise? That God and I are both withdrawn into ourselves and that only the experience of this non-relationality (the entering into darkness that pierces the cloud of unknowing) brings one into a genuine relationship with God?

Of course, Bataille and the writers of Via Negativa aren’t big on Being as equivocal with the multiplicity of autonomous objects, or at least not explicitly, but the elements are all there to go in that direction if need be.

This is a lot to say and I’m young (in philosopher years) and still working on all this (and it doesn’t help that I’m not in a graduate program and have to work forty hours a week), but I’m glad to have come along this post and found some common ground with your work, Dr. Bryant, even if you disagree. I hope you can forgive my past pedantic comments, I’m still growing.

The difference here would be that where Levinas’ thought indexes the withdrawal of the Other to other humans and the divine, OOO indexes this infinite excess to all objects.

Someone noted the essay of Levinas about a dog in the POW camp he was at. (Sorrry, I’m not at my library to look it up) So Levinas doesn’t just speak of Other in terms of humans and God. And of course Derrida defintiely extends the Other to all existence in a fashion similar to Kant’s thing in itself. (With obvious differences – Derrida is no Kantian)

“Someone noted the essay of Levinas about a dog in the POW camp he was at. (Sorrry, I’m not at my library to look it up) So Levinas doesn’t just speak of Other in terms of humans and God. And of course Derrida defintiely extends the Other to all existence in a fashion similar to Kant’s thing in itself. (With obvious differences – Derrida is no Kantian)”

Clark, I’m afraid this isn’t the point. It’s not enough for a dog to be other to us. The question is: are a dog and a rock other *to each other*.

In similar fashion, it is simply false that Derrida’s otherness occurs between inanimate entities without humans present to register it.

Yes, I think Graham’s points bring me around to why Cronenberg at times touches on an object-oriented horror — it would have to be because the sense of horror comes not just from the horror relational to the human, but that the human object is a horror relational to another nonhuman object, say, the disease or virus itself. From the perspective of the disease or virus, we become monstrously other, even as our bodies (and in Cronenberg, our minds, too) become a component of the disease’s survival and thriving. But is it a fleeting moment or something sustained in Cronenberg? That might not even be important, really, but I think those moments are there.

Whatever the case may be in Cronenberg, Graham is right (and I think Levi’s post is thoroughly in agreement) that we can’t let “otherness” be an anti-humanist otherness, an otherness related totally to the human sphere or even having a human starting point (though there is that otherness, too). OOO can only use otherness as a robust ontological principle which belongs to all individual entities, things or objects, tout court.

Folks, are we back to this nonsense again about Derrida? How many times does one need to cite the relevant passages on this point to get past this misreading?

Let me state this as clearly as possible:

1. The Same/Other relation does not always have the human on the “Same” side of the relation in Derrida.

2. Nor is the human always on the “Other” side of the relation in Derrida.

3. Nor is there any need for a human to be on the scene *at all* for the Same/Other relation and the effects of alterity to take place in Derrida.

There are dozens of passages on this issue throughout Derrida’s work. To save yourself some time, just use this one from “Eating Well” to set the record straight.

“. . . the processes of differance, trace, iterability, ex-appropriation, and so on . . . are at work everywhere, which is to say well beyond humanity.”

This kind of thing is Derrida 101. If you don’t understand this general point about Derrida’s work, you will not understand anything else about his larger project and you will fail to see where his work already anticipates OOO.

I suggested to Levi previously that Derrida is doing the proto-ontology for OOO. When you stop with the non-reading of Derrida and actually read his work carefully and charitably, you will see this painfully obvious point (viz., that he has already beat you to the punch in arguing for relationships of alterity, withdrawal, etc., between nonhuman beings that require no human subjects anywhere on the scene).

I say this not to defend Derrida (I’m on record in print about my deep differences with him). The point is to get the basics right so that we can have a decent conversation some day about where the real limits of his work lie in the development of a non-anthropocentric ontology. He goes a long way down this road, takes some interesting turns and some very questionable ones. But if you read him in this ridiculous fashion as a neo-Kantian, you’ll miss these things–and will also miss the important work he has done to chart a path beyond humanism and anthropocentrism.

Is it not so much that it is rendered immune, by dint that there needs to be a response in the first place i.e. “well that’s just a perspective!” in response TO alterity and more to the point that this constitutes a denial of alterity that is not an immunity?

Matthew, I’m not going to engage in any conversation that’s conducted in this sort of tone: “This kind of thing is Derrida 101.”

Derrida writes about *books.* You have an uphill fight here, and I’m always in support of uphill fights, but to act like it’s “Derrida 101″ to claim that Derrida is just as big a realist as Whitehead, that’s overplaying your hand.

There may be room for a debate here, but next time you want to engage in a debate with OOO, you need to skip the condescending “Derrida 101″ and “nonsense” and “ridiculous” sorts of lines. This is no way to win converts to your cause. You ought to be well aware that the vast majority of *Derrideans* do not spend any time talking about the non-human realm. You are, at best, in the fringe minority in your treatment of Derrida.

So, you might try persuading OOO people to view Derrida as an ally instead. But your diplomacy is not very effective to that end today. You come off as someone who is simply overinvested in the greatness of Derrida.

Levi, we Levinasians are glad to have you. There are no yearly dues, and the newsletter is glossy and an attractive coffee-table object (to go with your mug!)

It was the Levinas (and Alphonso Lingis) that first attracted me in Harman’s thought. Later I had to cope with the differences (and there’s no question, they are there.) But just as I agree that an unorthodox Badiouan could say there could be “events” in the red spot of Jupiter or, oh, say, at the bottom of the gulf of Mexico, so too an unorthodox levinasian can speak of ethical encounters between the sunlight and the green leaf or between the sea turtle and the sand. (The same goes, by the way, for Derrideans (mutatis mutandis); I agree with Matthew that this stuff is indeed to be found (and is important) in Derrida; but Harman is obviously right that it is hardly what people have emphasized.)

Love this one – I’m sure this will come across as condescending and preachy but a quick glance at Derrida’s book titles shows that he only writes about “books” in the same way everyone else writes about books, i.e. he writes about ideas others have expressed in books. Say a book about Latour’s books is a book about books, is it not? Even Derrida’s early books that explicitly are about texts and textuality are not about books at all. I can see how anyone who is familiar with Derrida would “lose his cool” at such an extreme misrepresentation.

Knowing that this comment is not likely to make it through Levi’s complex moderation algorithm, let me add that Harman’s assertion that Calarco is simply pissed off because he has overinvested in Derrida earlier in his career and now that Derrida’s stock is down (which we know how exactly?), he is trying desperately to hold on to the “cool philosophies” with his “Derrida already said so,” is much more condescending and dismissive of the whole section of scholarship (aka “Derrideans”) than anything Calarco suggested in his comment. I.e. we witness yet again the awesomeness of condescendingly dismissing condescending dismissals!

I agree with the reading of Derrida on the position of the same/other. But this raises a fundamental question foe me that might see me as a ‘perspectivist’;by arguing so is Derrida accepting the existance of objects that goes beyond seeing them as questionable perceptions ?

I tend to agree with Matthew on Derrida re the position of the human in the same/other. What troubles me, and may leave me open to the charge of ‘ perspectivist’, and where I disagree with Derrida, is how can we be sure that perceptions are anything more than that. You are aware that Derrida, in an interview with Richard Kearney, has said ‘to distance oneself…from the structure of reference[…]does not amount to saying that there is nothing beyond language’

[…] in on the Derrida discussion (and I really have no dog in this fight one way or another), Alphonso writes: I tend to agree with Matthew on Derrida re the position of the human in the same/other. What […]